


The Doctor's Best Shirt

by kathkin



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 16:10:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6617329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathkin/pseuds/kathkin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor has lost his best blue shirt. Does Jamie know where it is? Probably, but he's not about to admit it. Or, the Doctor is terrible for misplacing his things, and Jamie is a thief.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Doctor's Best Shirt

“Now, where have you got to,” the Doctor was saying. “Are you hiding under here? Hmm?” There was a soft pattering of cloth hitting the floor. “Oh, no, no. Where _are_ you?”

Padding closer, Jamie peeped around the door. The Doctor was hunched over a wide laundry hamper, plucking out garments apparently at random and tutting before tossing them on the floor. He was half-dressed, his braces stretched over bare shoulders. Jamie’d never seen the Doctor bare-chested before. It was unnerving, like seeing a tortoise out of its shell.

“What’s that you’re doing?” he said.

“Ah, Jamie!” said the Doctor, clutching a pair of spotted underpants. “Just the person.”

“I am?” said Jamie, leaning in the doorway.

“Ah, yes.” The Doctor threw the underpants over his shoulder and plucked a rumpled shirt from the hamper. “Have you seen my blue shirt?”

“You’re holdin’ it,” said Jamie, nodding at the fistful of blue cloth.

“Hm?” the Doctor looked at it. “No, no. Not _this_ blue shirt. My _good_ blue shirt.”

“You’ve a good one?” said Jamie. The Doctor had _good_ shirts? That was news to him.

“Yes, and it’s wandered off,” said the Doctor. “I can’t find it anywhere.” He examined the blue shirt he was holding, front and back, then discarded it and stood wringing his hands. “Oh, dear.”

Crossing the room, Jamie picked up the discarded shirt and looked it over. It looked just like all the Doctor’s other shirts to him – which was to say, rumpled, frayed at the sleeves, and with a few suspicious stains. “How’d you tell them apart?” he wondered aloud.

“The buttons,” said the Doctor, voice muffled. Jamie glanced over his shoulder and saw the Doctor’s bottom waving in the air as he delved deeper into the laundry hamper. “The good one has –” He emerged, hair tousled, waving a pair of trousers like a flag. “– very handsome buttons.”

Buttons. That rang a bell. “Wee pearly buttons?” said Jamie absently.

“Oh, yes!” the Doctor exclaimed. “Have you seen it?”

Had he seen it. Now _there_ was a difficult question. “No,” he lied. “I’ve no’ seen it.”

“You’re quite certain?” said the Doctor. “Because I’ve been searching all morning and I can’t find it anywhere.”

Drawing in a breath, Jamie turned to face him and said, “well, _I_ dinnae ken a thing about it. Why’re you askin’ me?”

“I only thought –”

“Why would I have seen it? I dinnae ken a thing about your shirts. I’ve nae seen any of your shirts!”

The Doctor blinked. “Well, apart from that one.”

“Eh?”

“The one you’re holding,” said the Doctor, nodding at it.

Jamie looked at the shirt in his hand, slightly mortified. He thrust it at the Doctor. “Here.”

The Doctor didn’t take it. He popped his hands on his hips, furled his brow, and said, “Jamie, did you take my shirt?”

“What?” Jamie looked at the Doctor’s stern face, his stance, primed for scolding. He took a deep breath, plastered on his most innocent expression, and said, “of course not. What would I want your shirt for? I’ve got shirts of my own.” He duly plucked at his own shirt and grinned shyly.

The Doctor’s hard gaze remained trained on him a moment longer. Then he shrugged, and said, “I suppose not. Ah, well.” He took the shirt Jamie was holding and slipped his braces off his shoulders. “Come along, now,” he said, turning and strutting out of the room while buttoning his shirt – as if Jamie were the one holding them up. “Still got to find my shoes!” he called from the corridor.

Rolling his eyes, Jamie jogged after him.

*

_Blue lights reflecting off shining silver armour. Faces that weren’t faces, faces like skulls, looming at him, empty, expressionless, relentless. Men screaming and gibbering, falling dead at their feet and they kept coming, coming, marching over the bodies as if they were clods of earth to be crushed beneath their feet – and they were raising their cold metal hands, and he was next, he was next –_

With a choked sob, his heart racing, Jamie awoke. For a few seconds dread gripped him, still half-convinced that the darkness around him was the shadowy confines of a dying space station rather than his room in the TARDIS – his own room, and his own bed. He was at home. He’d been dreaming.

_Ah_ , he thought. _Cybermen_. That made a change. The last few had all been daleks.

He was clammy all over with cold sweat. The sheets were twisted into a knot. Sighing, he rolled over and kicked at his bedclothes. He reached a hand under his pillow – and tugged out a rumpled blue shirt.

Pressing his face into the cloth, he closed his eyes, and breathed in. At once, comfort and warmth flooded his body. He was home, in the TARDIS, in the safest place in the universe. It was all over now. The cybermen were long gone – and even if they weren’t, the Doctor could deal with them.

The shirt smelled warm and familiar, like honey and old books. It smelled like the Doctor. It smelled like home. He worried the soft, old fabric between his forefinger and thumb as he settled down to sleep. Safe as houses.

By the time he drifted off, his nightmare was all but forgotten.

*

“I can’t think how I could have lost something so important,” said the Doctor, rifling through Jamie’s shelves.

“It’s only a wee flute.” Jamie rolled his eyes and poked half-heartedly at a pile of clothes on the floor with his toe.

“It’s a _recorder_ ,” the Doctor snapped. He went to Jamie’s bedside table and glared at it, fists on his hips. “And I’m quite _sure_ I left it just here.” He held out his hands, measuring the length of his recorder against the width of the table. “You must have moved it.”

“I havenae touched it!” snapped Jamie. “It’ll have got knocked down the back.” He looked behind the table. No recorder.

“It would help if your room weren’t such a pigsty.” The Doctor picked up things from the floor and dropped them almost at random. “Honestly.”

“Hey now, I’ve seen your study,” said Jamie, getting down on his hands and knees to peer under the table. “We’re as bad as each other, you and me.”

“I suppose,” sighed the Doctor. “Oh, this is silly. Why did I bring my recorder into your bedroom in the first place?”

“You were wakin’ me up playin’ _Scotland the Brave_ ,” said Jamie, squinting under his bed. And butchering it, he could have added but didn’t.

“Oh, yes,” said the Doctor, and chuckled. Jamie heard a series of soft, fabricky thumps as the Doctor searched his bed.

“It’s no’ up there,” he said. “D’you no’ think I’d have noticed your recorder pokin’ me while I was tryin’ tae sleep?”

“No harm in looking,” said the Doctor. “I, ah –” _Flumph_. He went silent.

“Doctor?” Brushing dust off his kilt, Jamie knelt up. “What’s wrong? You found it?”

No – but he’d found something else. In his hunting, the Doctor had lifted Jamie’s pillow – and beneath it – beneath it he’d found –

“You _did_ take my shirt!” The Doctor exclaimed, snatching it up and holding it before his chest as if to check it was definitely his.

“I, erm.” Jamie scrambled to his feet. “It’s no’ what it looks like.”

“What was it doing under _there_?” the Doctor wondered aloud. “Jamie? Eh?”

Jamie realised he was expected to answer. “I, erm – I –” He rubbed the back of his head. “Haven’t the foggiest, Doctor. You must’ve left it there.

“Left it there?” The Doctor blinked. “Why would I leave _my_ shirt in _your_ room?”

“I dinnae ken,” said Jamie. “Why’d you leave your recorder in here?”

“Point taken.” The Doctor began to fold the shirt, smoothing out the wrinkles against his stomach. “Well, I’ll, ah, be taking this, then.”

Before he could stop himself, Jamie said, “no!”

“No?” the Doctor looked at him crossly. “Why shouldn’t I take it? It’s my shirt, after all.”

“I just – I, er – I want it,” said Jamie.

“So you _did_ take it.” The Doctor fixed him with a glower that was either stern or mock-stern. Jamie couldn’t always tell the difference.

“Erm. Aye?” Jamie shifted uncomfortably.

“Whatever for?” said the Doctor.

“Just to have,” said Jamie faintly.

“Well, you can’t have it,” said the Doctor, folding the shirt more briskly. “You’ve got plenty of shirts of your own.”

“Och, come on,” said Jamie. “You’ve got loads just like it. You’ll no’ miss just one!”

The Doctor fixed him with a hard look. “It’s important to you, is it?” he said.

“Aye,” Jamie admitted. “It is.”

The Doctor scrutinised him – and, at length, said, “alright. You can have it.” He held out the shirt – but no sooner had Jamie reached for it when he snatched it away. “ _If_ you tell me what you want it for.”

“Och, no!” Jamie whined. “What does it matter?”

“It seems to matter to you,” the Doctor pointed out.

“I just – I need it.”

“Whatever for?” The Doctor glanced over the front and back of the shirt, as if it might hold the secret.

“Well, for – I – y’see – ach.” Jamie drew in a breath. “Promise you willnae laugh?”

The Doctor’s eyes softened. “Laugh? Of course not.”

“It’s just – it smells like you.”

“Pardon?” the Doctor sputtered, and heaven alone knew what he must have been thinking.

Steeling himself, Jamie looked at his feet and confessed. “It’s just – sometimes, when I get nightmares – I like to have it there – because it smells like you and it’s like – it’s like you’re there with me.” He dared to look up at the Doctor. “And I feel better.”

The Doctor was staring. His eyes had gone all big and sad – sad the way he’d looked at a crushed flower, or a lost kitten. “I didn’t know you had nightmares,” he said in a small voice.

“I don’t, really,” said Jamie. “They’re no’ that bad, and – I can handle them, and –”

Gently, without taking his eyes from Jamie’s face, the Doctor held out the shirt. Jamie snatched it, cheeks flushed with sudden embarrassment.

“You should have told me,” the Doctor said, and Jamie knew perfectly well it wasn’t about the shirt any more but still he said,

“I didnae think you’d miss it.” He scrumpled the shirt in his hands, feeling the soft familiar texture.

“I didn’t mean the – oh,” the Doctor. “Oh, you silly boy.” Suddenly, his arms were around Jamie, pulling him into a tight hug. His hair tickled Jamie’s nose. It smelled like home. “You should have told me.”

“I’m –” Jamie gave up fumbling for excuses. The Doctor’s arms were so snug about him, his body so close he could feel the double-beat of his hearts. “I didn’t want tae bother you.”

“You can bother me whenever you like.” The Doctor drew back slightly, enough to look Jamie in the eye.

“I dinnae want to be any worry –”

“Oh, piffle.” The Doctor took both of Jamie’s hands in his, the shirt still clutched between them. “You can keep it – but, I – if you ever want the, the real thing – I shan’t be far away.”

“Thank-you,” said Jamie, which felt woefully inadequate. At a loss for words, he wrapped his arms around the Doctor and pulled him into another hug.

“Although,” said the Doctor into his neck. “Next time you feel like borrowing my clothes, I’d really rather you asked.”

Jamie snorted out a laugh. “Aye. I will.”

“Yes, well – oooh!” The Doctor exclaimed. Pushing away from Jamie, he scurried across the room and fell to his knees. “ _There_ you are!” Shoving a heap of tartan cloth off Jamie’s chair, he leapt to his feet, grinning and brandishing his recorder. “Found it!”


End file.
